[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
When nostalgic Brexiteers look back to the ‘good old days’, the summers were warmer, the food was tastier, and the dogs and people were friendlier. They have convinced themselves that it was a Golden Age before we joined the old Common Market in 1973. They have forgotten about the strikes and confrontations, the poor productivity, and the years of stagnation.
Some of them believe that the British Empire was destroyed by conspiracies but history tells a different story. When the Japanese won their war with Russia in 1905 they showed that the European powers were vulnerable, and when they took Singapore from Britain in 1942 they proved their point to the subject peoples of Asia and Africa. We fought colonial wars in Malaya, Kenya, Aden, and Cyprus but there was no stopping “The Wind of Change.” Within thirty years of WW2, all that was left of the Empire was a few outposts like Gibraltar and the Falklands.
Those of us born in the last days of the British Empire are proud of our achievements. We built roads, railways and bridges all over the world and bequeathing a civil service, a judiciary, and a parliamentary system to our colonial subjects. The British Empire was a force for civilisation and progress, but it was also the source of cheap food that damaged our agriculture, the producer of cheap cotton goods that destroyed our textiles industry, and the supplier of immigrants that undercut our wages and conditions. We discovered the hard way that commerce overrules sovereignty and that people follow goods across borders. In the days of Empire we recruited workers from the West Indies; as members of the EU we signed up to its rules and conditions, and if we are swallowed up by the United States we will import contaminated food and commit our troops to ‘perpetual war’.
Capitalism has been global since the days of the East India Company. We fought the Chinese to force them to buy our opium; we fought the Afrikaners for their gold and diamonds, and we fought the Turks to steal the Arabian oilfields. But the days of trade enforced by bayonets are over. We belong to NATO and our armed forces are under the command of General Curtiss Scaparroti, Supreme Allied Commander Europe. We are members of the United Nations and subject to the International Court of Human Rights. We belong to the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. If we leave the EU we will operate under the World Trade Organisation. And the majority of our immigrants come from outside the EU, mainly from Africa and Asia.
We pro-Europeans believe in beneficial access to markets, incoming investment, and peace in Northern Ireland. And, realising that the Empire has gone, we see our future in terms of European co-operation. We also know that wages are far too low and that immigration can only be controlled by international agreement.
These arguments have been thoroughly debated but the decision to leave the EU was largely emotional. Abstract ideas of ‘sovereignty’ were more important than economics. In fact, some on the Brexiters are happy to accept a lower standard of living for the illusion of sovereignty.
As for immigration, the Brexiteers don’t regard West Indians, Africans and Asians as foreigners, after all, they play cricket and most of them speak English. They are happy to admit our former colonial subjects but they are determined to stop the Poles.
Neither side has a monopoly on patriotism but some people are fond of shouting “traitor” at the opposition. That’s unfair because we all want the best for our country. People are not traitors because they have a different opinion, and shouting abuse at foreigners does not make one a patriot. We are entering uncharted waters and time alone will tell who is right and who is wrong.
The BBC
John Reith 1889-1971 photo credit BBC.
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a state-owned media empire that was founded by the brilliant Scottish engineer and radio pioneer John Reith in 1922. His original intention was for the service to be educational as well as entertaining. Left-wingers accuse it of being right-wing and right-wingers accuse it of being left- wing. The truth is that it supports the establishment, not necessarily the government of the day but the overriding liberal-capitalists consensus.
[MR editorial note: Nationalists being against corrupt establishment is indicative of what we are calling “Left Nationalism”]
The Corporation is funded by an annual ‘licence fee’ of £147.00. If you watch TV in the UK you must pay the licence fee, even if you are watching a foreign station. This unfair levy is the main source of the BBC’s massive income of nearly five billion pounds. It wastes this money on presenters like Chris Evans who earned £2.2 million last year, Gary Lineker who earned £1,7 million, and Graham Norton who got £850,000. The BBC also has legions of journalists, researchers, and photographers who fly around the world gathering news stories. And it spends a fortune on legal fees and settlements.
The British government is struggling to find money for the National Health Service, defence, education, and almost everything else. But we allow the bloated BBC to waste billions of pounds on broadcasters and bureaucrats. We should stop this madness by selling it off; the TV and radio stations, the buildings, the news service, the sports franchises, and everything else.
And we should not fall for the myths of impartiality and quality surrounding the Corporation. It’s forever congratulating itself on its high standards, but it’s as biased as any other state-owned propaganda outlet, and most of its TV and radio programs are made by independent production companies.
The licence fee should be abolished and the slimmed-down company should be paid for by adverting revenue, with any profits going to the state. Presenters should be paid an industrial wage and the service should be returned to John Reith’s founding principles. The current BBC is a money-gobbling monster that’s out of control. We should sack the lot of them and start again.
Post-Brexit Policies
When we leave the EU the political parties will no longer be able to blame everything on Europe, they will be forced to address our problems. As I write, they are holding their annual conferences and making their promises for the future.
Theresa May is clinging to her Chequers plan despite the fact that it has been rejected by the EU and most of her party. The Tories have abandoned austerity and are promising to build more social housing and increase public spending. They have also promised to reduce corporation tax so an increase in income tax is inevitable.
Jeremy Corbyn expects to win the next general election and he has promised to renationalise the railways, the Royal Mail, and the water companies. His chancellor, John MacDonald has revived the manifesto of the Italian Social Republic to give shares and seats on the board of companies employing more than 250 workers. When Benito Mussolini introduced this policy it was overtaken by events.
Vince Cable pledged that the Lib Dems would lead the fight against Brexit but our ‘first past the post’ electoral system is rigged against them. They have 12 seats at Westminster but under proportional representation they would have more than 50.
Ukip and the various parties of the far-right will lose most of their reasons for living when we quit Europe. But immigration will still be with us because most of them come from outside of the EU. The latest ONS figures show that in the last year 127,000 EU citizens came to the UK and 179,000 from the rest of the world. In fact, if we sign trade deals with China and India we will probably admit more of them.
All of the parties are promising to increase defence spending, but if our economy shrinks we will have even less money to spend. We may have to stop pretending to be a world power and deploy our armed forces for the defence of the UK, instead of getting involved in Afghanistan and the Middle East. That would mean more frigates and destroyers but we would not need two gigantic aircraft carriers and a fleet of nuclear submarines.
Education also needs sorting out. France and Germany provide free education from nursery to university and so should we. We must gear our educational system to provide the doctors, engineers and scientists that we need instead of relying on immigration.
Tommy Robinson, the far-right leader, was bankrolled until recently by a US tech billionaire whose company’s British clients include the supermarket giant Asda.
Robert Shillman, founder and chairman of the Nasdaq-listed multinational Cognex, helped to pay Robinson’s high-five-figure salary, in the latest example of American cash flowing into the British hard right. The disclosure comes as Robinson’s former assistant, also paid by a Shillman-funded group, told The Sunday Times that the anti-Islam activist practised a form of “panto journalism” that was “leading people down a dark path”.
In the first interview by any insider, Lucy Brown, who worked closely alongside Robinson until three months ago, said: “I thought genuinely that I was joining the side that told the truth and I’ve come to realise that it’s not. It’s just about getting [YouTube] views and retweets. This is a business and your outrage, valid as it is, will be monetised as such.”
Brown, who was fired after an argument about a Muslim booked to speak at one of Robinson’s rallies, was part of an often warring inner circle that included a middle-class gay couple, international leaders of the far right, a former underwear model and Celebrity Big Brother contestant, and rougher-hewn figures from Robinson’s time as leader of the English Defence League (EDL).
She said Robinson “used to be kind of fun, but he got a bit of a diva attitude after a while and was letting more EDL figures cloud his judgment. I’ve just reread Peter Pan and there’s so many similarities. You can be around as long as you still worship him, but when you grow up, then you’re out.” Brown added that she was taking legal action over unpaid wages that she says she is owed.
Life with “Team Tommy” was chaotic, Brown said: “It was like being like a firefighter — always waiting for the next Facebook message and we’d be off to Manchester or Poland straight away, sometimes before a real plan had been drawn up. We’d be sleeping in the car and eating in service stations.”
Several of the supposed scandals that Robinson sought to expose fall down on closer examination. “I used to think, foolishly, that when he went home he was doing his research and putting case files together,” Brown said. “He doesn’t, he just goes home and eats crisps and looks himself up on Twitter.”
Emotive YouTube and social media content bring in donations. In one recent video Robinson suggested that the deaths of three teenage boys hit by a drunk driver in Hayes, w. London, in January was a terror attack “covered up” by the police and media — apparently based on the fact that the driver, who has a Hindu name, was Asian.
In a video recorded in a Muslim area of Manchester after last year’s bombing, Robinson said: “In these houses are enemy combatants who want to kill you, maim you and destroy you.”
He was freed on appeal last week after being jailed for filming people at a trial of alleged sex offenders and broadcasting the footage on a Facebook live stream. His supporters claim he was a “political prisoner” silenced by the authorities for trying to reveal the truth about Muslim sex offending.
Brown said this narrative was “whipping people up into a frenzy and I worry that some are on the cusp of acting out their frustrations against Muslims as a result. I’ve never seen this before, not in the way it’s playing out now. People are at breaking point — we must not push them further for the sake of money or fame.”
She was one of a handful of people closest to Robinson, name-checked in his videos and who saw him most days along with two other paid British staff, Caolan Robertson and George Llewelyn-John. Robertson and Llewelyn-John, who are open about their gay relationship, shared a flat in an expensive block in Chelsea, west London, before moving to Bedfordshire to be closer to Robinson.
All four, including Robinson himself, were employees of The Rebel Media, a Toronto-based far-right website, extensively funded by Shillman, which has employed a number of Britons, including the writer and former Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins, who once described migrants as “cockroaches”.
Robinson was “Shillman fellow” which the Rebel’s chief executive, Ezra Levant, said meant the tech billionaire provided “support” for Robinson’s salary. Robinson was initially paid between £5,000 and £6,000 by The Rebel, rising to £8,000 a month, equivalent to nearly £100,000 a year, Brown said.
The three assistants were paid up to £2,500 a month each. Levant refused to confirm or deny the figures last night, saying it would not be “appropriate for me to disclose what we paid former employees”.
Shillman, 72, uses his salary and shareholding in Cognex, which he founded in 1981, to finance right-wing causes. He is on the board of the David Horowitz Freedom Centre, based in California, a “school for political warfare” against the “fifth column” and “enemy within”.
The organisation, described as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, based in Alabama, also employs Robert Spencer, an anti-Muslim polemicist banned from the UK. Cognex, which makes advanced scanners and sensors, has a substantial operation in Britain. UK users of its technology include Asda, Nissan and the drug giant AstraZeneca.
Shillman and Cognex did not respond to requests for comment.
Robinson and the others left The Rebel last year amid a row over money, with Robertson accusing Levant of profiteering by getting contributors to raise “money [The Rebel] didn’t need”.
Levant in turn accused Robertson and Llewelyn-John of “blackmail”. Both sides deny each other’s claims. Robinson’s departure from The Rebel did not much affect his income, according to Brown, with huge sums flooding in from his own crowdfunding website and the three staff employed directly by Robinson from the proceeds.
“George and Caolan would off- handedly say, oh, we’ve got £100,000 in donations now,” Brown said. “I think he’s doing OK.”
Raheem Kassam, a Robinson ally, also confirmed the figure. Joe Mulhall, of the anti-racist group Hope not Hate, believes that even £100,000 may be a substantial underestimate.
Such material has brought Robinson an affluent lifestyle, living with his wife, Jenna, and their three young children in a £500,000 house in a Bedfordshire village. The family is currently on a two-week holiday in Tenerife, the second holiday they have spent on the Canary island in the past four months.
After the publication of this article, Brown did a radio interview with Mike Graham. It was billed as a big exposé, but in fact she said almost nothing of consequence. Still, if you want to listen to it, here it is.
There were some interesting details about Robinson’s spell in prison in this Paul Weston video. Apparently, because Muslims were preparing the prison meals, he had to avoid them for fear of being poisoned. This meant he could only eat one tin of tuna a day.
Fifty years after Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, immigrants are still coming to the UK. The latest ONS figures show that last year there were 101,000 migrants from the EU and 227,000 from outside the EU.
Enoch Powell was opposed to the EU and immigration but he was not anti-European and he refused an invitation to stand for the National Front in 1974. At a speech which he delivered in French in Lyon in 1971 he stated:
“From boyhood, I have been devoted to the study of that Greek and Roman inheritance, which in varying measure is common to all that is Europe, and not only ‘Europe’ of the six or eight or ten but Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals – and beyond. I also claim that reverent enthusiasm for the history of my own country which commands an equal reverence for the past that has formed everything else which is European. The truest European, in my opinion, is the man who is most humbly conscious of the vast demands which comprehension of, even a little part of this Europe imposes upon those who seek it; for the deeper we penetrate, the more the marvellous differentiation of human society within this single continent evokes our wonder. The very use of the word ‘Europe’ in expressions like ‘European unity’, ‘going into Europe’, ‘Europe’s role in the world’ is a solecism which grates upon the ear of all true Europeans: only Americans can be excused for using it.”
Uber-nationalist parties are wrong to claim Enoch Powell as one of their own. They want to spend more on defence and the National Health Service but he resigned from Harold Macmillan’s government in 1958 over plans to increase public spending. They are nostalgic about the British Empire but he was in favour of Indian independence and critical of our mistreatment of Kenyan detainees during the Mau Mau Emergency. They despise foreigners but he was a classical scholar who spoke several languages.
The working men who marched in support of Enoch Powell lost interest when ‘The Sun’ and ‘The Daily Mail’ turned against him. But the influx of refugees from Africa and the Middle East is finally challenging the liberal consensus. Populist parties are now in government in Italy, Austria and Hungary, and powerful in France, Germany, Sweden and Poland.
At present, there is no solidarity on the issue. There’s no point in Germany sending Africans back to Italy or Greece because they landed there, or sharing them out amongst the nations of Europe. We need a common European migration and asylum policy and a combined Naval force to patrol the Mediterranean. Not long ago such a policy would have been unthinkable but since Angela Merkel took in a million refugees attitudes have hardened and deportation is firmly on the agenda.
The supporters of multi-culturalism got away with their mischief because global capitalism made most of us richer. We were too busy earning a living to worry about immigration, but its social consequences have had a profound effect on public opinion. Rising crime and terrorism are forcing Europe to get its act together; just as the UK is preparing to leave.
Plutocracy
Our system of government dates back to the days of stage coaches, three-cornered hats, and universal ignorance. Only the upper classes had the vote and bribery was the norm. Today, everybody can vote and they have all got smartphones in their pockets to inform them on any topic. It shouldn’t be so easy for charlatans to get elected but they still manage it.
We now have the technology to consult the electorate without calling a general election. Online referendums could be used to inform the government. This would make Parliament obsolete together with 650 MPs and over 800 members of The House of Lords. Those parliamentarians over retiring age could be pensioned off and the younger ones redeployed as traffic wardens.
Of course, no such reforms will be introduced. We will keep our ancient institutions with their obsolete rituals and carry on wasting millions of pounds. Our MPs will continue to shuffle into lobbies to be counted like sheep and our noble Lords will still frustrate their knavish tricks.
The big businessmen who really run this country are not impressed by public opinion and they see no reason to interfere with tradition. Somebody said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. But that’s exactly what we do at every general election when we chose a government from the same assortment of nonentities as before.
The alternative to this madness is not a dictatorship but representative government. We should replace Parliament with a secure computerised system that couldn’t be got at by plutocrats.
The top ten British companies are amongst the most powerful in the world. They are; Royal Dutch Shell, HSBC Holdings, British American Tobacco, BP, Glaxo Smith Kline, Diageo, Astra Zeneca, Vodaphone, Unilever, and Glencoe. British businesses paid £43 billion in corporation tax in 2014-15 and contributed an unknown amount in ‘donations’ to political parties. We are not governed by elected MPs but by the appointed executives of major corporations who put profits before people.
It’s the duty of big business to make money for their shareholders but it’s the duty of government to protect workers’ rights and provide decent health care and social security. There are some excellent firms that look after their workers but most of them are only interested in making money. Karl Marx predicted that global capitalism would eventually turn into socialism but we haven’t got there yet.
Fashions in Thinking
Without even realising it we all follow fashion to some extent. Short hair is currently in fashion for men but not so long ago long hair was the norm. We may not keep up with the latest styles but we find ourselves slowly adapting to them. Have a look at some old photographs of your friends and family and you will notice collar-length hairstyles, flared trousers, and floral shirts that you would not wear today.
Conformity starts in the playground and continues into old age. Women of a certain age try to be fashionable by wearing short skirts that would look better on a teenager. And it’s the same with social attitudes. Years ago black dogs and cats were often called ‘Nigger’, and black people usually appeared in films as servants. The original housekeeper in the Tom & Jerry cartoons was a black mammy but she eventually became Irish.
When John Tyndall launched ‘Spearhead’ magazine n 1964 he used his front page to described Africans as ‘sub-human’, but a year later the Race Relations Act was passed and AK Chesterton warned:
“The man who thinks that this war can be won by mouthing slogans about ‘dirty Jews and filthy niggers’ is a maniac whose place should not be in the National Front but in a mental hospital.”
Whatever our thoughts were in the Sixties, it’s likely that we have changed our minds. Not many people want to go back to the days when the glamorous model Ruth Ellis (pictured) was hanged for shooting dead her brutal lover, or when the brilliant codebreaker Alan Turing was hounded to his death by the authorities. Times have changed and most of us have changed with them.
This is often blamed on the Frankfurt School, a group of Marxist scholars who set out to change public attitudes. But most of these reforms can be traced to the French Revolution, or even further back to the Sermon on The Mount. The Marxists did not invent social justice they just adopted it as a strategy.
Of course, people are influenced by propaganda. Smoking and drinking and driving are two positive examples of ‘social engineering’. The latest campaign pairs black and white couples in almost every TV commercial. This is not a government initiative but the latest fashion in thinking. Keen young account executives are persuading their clients that diversity sells products. The message to women seems to be, if you want a comfortable bed or a new kitchen, marry a black man.
Netanyahu had a significant role in arranging the Trump-Putin meeting along with some of its key objectives. Note that Netanyahu has been close to the highly corrupt Kushner family since Jared was a child; and it was Jared who negotiated Trump’s route to the White House by means of an avowal to undo the Iran Deal.
The Jerusalem Post, “Intelligence Report: Israel needs Trump and Putin in Syria”, 15 July 2018:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin . (photo credit: KOBI GIDEON/GPO)
Though he hasn’t been present there, the spirit of Israel’s prime minister hovered all over the summit meeting between the US and Russian presidents in Helsinki in mid-July. Benjamin Netanyahu worked laboriously mobilizing all his influence in Washington to persuade Donald Trump to meet Vladimir Putin.
The two leaders have mysterious relations that are unfolding as a special investigation of former FBI director Robert Muller into alleged Russian meddling in the last US presidential elections is progressing. Trump and Putin were scheduled to discuss international matters from North Korea to the Russian occupation of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine to the trade wars declared by Trump and the conflicts in the Middle East.
The Israeli prime minister, however, is mainly interested in two topics: Iran and the civil war in Syria. He needs both leaders to back his policy on these fronts.
On July 11, four days before the summit, Netanyahu was set to meet Putin and sit next to him in his private box at a Moscow soccer stadium watching together one of the two World Cup’s semi-finals.
It will be Netanyahu’s 10th meeting with the Russian leader in the last three years. He has more Putin’s hours than any other leader in the world.
The frequency and urgency of his encounters with Putin are a result of the fact that the Syrian civil war appears to be reaching its end and the army of President Bashar Assad is on its way to regain its position along the Israeli border on the Golan Heights.
Israel’s interests are to allow the Syrian army to return to its posts along the border as mandated by the 1974 agreement on “Disengagement of Forces” between the two sides, which ended the 1973 Yom Kippur War, while preventing any presence of Iranian, Lebanese Hezbollah or Shi’ite militias in undefined areas near the border.
After seven-and-a-half years of violence and bloodshed, including the use of chemical weapons, the death toll among Syrian government forces, opposition forces and civilians is estimated by UN and civil rights groups to be more than 500,000. As of December 2017, approximately 13.1 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance in Syria, with 6.3 million people displaced internally, and an additional 5.4 million registered refugees, making the Syrian situation among the largest humanitarian crises in the world.
Throughout the war years, Israeli policy remained more or less unchanged. Though some of the Israeli intelligence estimates were wrong (“Assad will be toppled within three weeks,” then- defense minister Ehud Barak predicted in 2011), the policy of non-intervention and not taking sides was consistent, with a few minor exceptions.
The Israeli “red lines” set by Netanyahu and the three defense ministers who served under him during this period – Barak, Moshe Ya’alon and Avigdor Liberman – consisted until a year ago of the following.
• To ensure the peace on the Israeli side of the border by responding to any violation of its sovereignty, deliberate or errant, by the Syrian army or rebel groups.
• To provide humanitarian aid to the villages next to the border, thus ensuring their gratitude and minimizing their incentives to act against Israel. So far, Israel has treated in its hospitals 3,500 victims, many of them children and women, and supplied more than a hundred tons of medical aid, food, clothes and tents worth nearly $100 million, which mostly was financed by contributions from evangelical communities in the US.
• According to foreign reports, the “good border” relations also included a supply of light weapons, ammunition and communication gear to the moderate, national-secular rebels groups near the border. In return, according to these reports, Israel, gleaned good intelligence on what was happening in Syria and beyond.
• To secure the safety of the Syrian Druze community (roughly half a million people), in order to calm down Israel’s own small Druze community (about 120,000), whose members serve in the Israeli armed and security forces and are considered loyal citizens of the Jewish state.
• To crush by military force efforts by Iran and Hezbollah to create a terrorist infrastructure on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.
• To conduct air strikes and demolish transfers from Iran via Syria to Hezbollah of sophisticated weapons.
These goals were more or less achieved by a wise policy of the Israeli military and government by employing the tactics of a tightrope dance that combined determination, sensitivity and caution.
Even the arrival of the thousands of members of the Russian contingency and especially its air force and state-of-the-art anti-aircraft batteries didn’t stop Israel from preserving and enhancing its national interests. This was possible by establishing direct “hotlines” between Hmeimim Air Base in northwestern Latakia, where Russian headquarters is located, and the IDF and Israel Air Force headquarters in Tel Aviv.
The occasional talks between Israel and Russian officers helped “deconflicting” and the prevention of dog fights between Israeli and Russian pilots. On top of that, in his rounds of meetings with Putin, it seems that Netanyahu obtained from the Russia leader the license to almost freely operate in Syria as long as targets were not fully identified with the Assad regime.
But a year or so ago, Israel’s red lines were redefined and extended. While all the above interests are still in place, Israel has added a more important goal: to remove the presence of Iranian, Hezbollah and Shi’ite militias as far as possible from the Israeli border.
On Thursday 28 and Friday 29 of June the leaders of the 28 Member States of the European Union met in Brussels for a summit to discuss in particular migration policy at a European scale. A summit that has brought some progress but which is not a decisive victory for anyone, even if the V4 can celebrate having imposed its themes and some of its solutions, as well as having overcome the domination of the immigrationist paradigm.
Belgium, Brussels – Once again, the European Union seems to be paralyzed. The leaders of the 28 EU Member States, however, all wanted to move the debate on the migration issue forward, and the discussions dragged on late into the night. Nothing helps, the migration issue is not settled, and no idea is unanimous.
The Hungarian Prime Minister represented the Visegrád countries during the V4-France meeting preceding the summit, in order to negotiate with Emmanuel Macron. The immigrationist governments, like those of the French Republic or Germany, have agreed to abandon the idea of mandatory quotas for all, which is already a great victory for Viktor Orbán and V4. For the strong man of Budapest, who announced on his arrival in Brussels his willingness to put an end to massive and uncontrolled immigration to Europe and initiate remigration, the summit can not however be seen as a total victory.
Certainly, the EU is starting to be in tune with the solution proposed by the V4 three years ago, namely the setting up of refugee camps outside the EU borders – to make the registration of applications and to distinguish refugees from cheaters and economic migrants – and Frontex control over the Mediterranean Sea. But if we do not know the exact content of the negotiations, we understand that each side had to make concessions.
Quotas will only apply to Member States wishing to participate in the relocation of immigrants, but those who oppose it may well be required to participate more heavily in the funding of protection structures. Frontex should indeed significantly increase its workforce in the coming years, and that will have a cost. Slovak Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini announced that Slovakia was volunteering to temporarily accommodate 1,200 migrants to relieve neighboring countries – referring to Austria. He insisted, however, that every migrant should be accepted by the government, and that none of them could enter and stay in Slovakia without prior government control and acceptance.
No details on the technical solutions: the EU is talking about increasing aid to the countries of origin of the migrants, but the population of these countries is expected to double by 2050. And what about the migrants which will be refused in the registration camps? Many questions still arise.
A concrete progress for the Visegrád group, certainly because of the Italian pressure on the issue, is that NGOs should now stop picking up in the Libyan territorial waters migrants on smugglers’ ships, and let the Libyan coastguard do their work. This should considerably dry up the massive influx of illegal immigrants into Italy, and therefore into Europe.
So if the V4 has managed to establish itself as a key and influential trading partner, it has not – yet? – obtained total gain of cause. The fight within the EU on the migration issue has not been resolved this week.
Euractiv, “EU summit approves tortured conclusions on migration after sleepless night”, 29 June 2018:
EU leaders reached a much-needed deal on steps to tackle migration after resolving a bitter row with Italy’s inexperienced prime minister. Extended talks lasted through the night and only wrapped up on Friday morning (29 June).
Europe’s leaders got the bitter taste of what anti-system diplomacy, or creative disruption means. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who heads Italy’s month-old populist and anti-immigration government, took the entire summit as hostage.
Conte blocked the summit conclusions in a bid to get his reluctant counterparts to share responsibility for asylum seekers landing on Italian shores.
A summit ending without conclusions would have been a political disaster with unpredictable negative consequences for the EU bloc, so the stakes were high
A relieved Merkel in backround as an agitated Conte gets a pat on the back from Tusk and Macron
Disruptive diplomacy
Former law professor Conte, until recently a virtual political unknown, came to Brussels emboldened by the announcement of an upcoming visit to Washington to visit US President Donald Trump, who has hailed Rome’s tough stance, and who himself blocked the conclusions of a recent G7 leaders meeting on trade.
The summit which is expected to end today by noon, was called the “mother of all summits”, in particular because of the potential impact on the political future of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is wrestling to preserve her fragile government at home.
“Europe has many challenges but migration could end up determining Europe’s destiny,” Merkel told German lawmakers hours ahead of the summit.
There are very few migrants arriving in Germany recently but Merkel’s conservative CSU ally warned it would send back migrants who reach the German border after having registered in other EU states.
Such a move could see a domino effect of re-introduction of internal borders and the collapse of the Schengen area.
In contrast, Italy is actually under migratory pressure from the Central Mediterranean route with significant numbers of arrivals salvaged at sea and brought to its ports. Since the new government took over, Italy has refused to let several migrant rescue boats dock at Italian ports, reopening EU divisions.
“Italy does not need more words, but concrete actions,” Conte told reporters as he arrived at the summit, adding that if EU leaders did not offer more help “we will not have shared conclusions”. Italy wants the responsibility for migrants on ships arriving on its shores to be shared out across the 28-nation European Union.
Drama at summit
European Council spokesman Preben Aamann said that after several hours of talks, conclusions on all issues from the summit – which is also dealing with trade and defence in addition to the core subject of migration – had been blocked.
“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” an Italian source added.
Other sources said the other 27 EU leaders were “astonished” and unhappy over Italy hardening its position and that “it was a very virulent discussion and everyone jumped on the Italian”.
The ‘mother of all summits’ wrapped up earlier. Check out how it all unfolded here. It was all supposed to be about unity but there wasn’t even a family photo, in what seems like a new tradition.
Jean-Claude Juncker was in full House of Cards mode about his upcoming trip to Washington to try and avert an all-out trade war. Conclusions on the eurozone were, as expected, the bare minimum.
Brexit barely got a mention, except on “insufficient progress”. Emmanuel Macron has lost patience and wants a final withdrawal deal done by the autumn. British actor and repentant Leave voter Danny Dyer summed up ex-PM David Cameron’s role in one moment of genius.
One overlooked result of the summit was an agreement between the Baltics, Poland and the Commission on decoupling Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from Russia’s power grid and sphere of influence.
Euractiv, “EU, Baltics, Poland target Russia grid separation by 2025”, 29 June 2018:
The Baltic nations, Poland and the European Commission agreed Thursday (28 June) on a roadmap to synchronise the region’s electricity network with the rest of continental Europe’s by 2025 and end their reliance on the Russian grid.
The leaders of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and the European Commission all signed up to a political agreement during a special ceremony on the sidelines of the ongoing European Council summit.
According to the roadmap, the deadline for concluding the synchronisation of the Baltic grid is set for 2025, using an existing electricity interconnector between Poland and Lithuania, as well as a planned undersea cable.
The latter project will only be undertaken if results of a study by the European Network of Transmission System Operators (ENTSO-E) show that it guarantees energy security, security of supply and if costs are within reason. Results due in September.
Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said that “since the beginning of our mandate, my Commission has been committed to having full integration of the Baltic states’ grids with the rest of Europe”.
Energy Union boss Maroš Šefčovič called the deal “solidarity at its best“, adding that the project will “cost us a lot from the European budget”, through the Connecting Europe Facility.
Poland’s role in the preliminary deal is crucial as it will act as the primary link between the Baltics and the rest of Europe. In March, the three countries revealed they would not support any EU sanctions against Warsaw as part of the ongoing rule of law spat with Brussels.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (L-R), Estonian Prime Minister Juris Ratas, Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis, Latvia’s Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis during Prime Ministers Council of the Baltic Council of Ministers with Polish counterpart in Vilnius, Lithuania 9 Mar 2018. [EPA-EFE]
Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have confirmed that they are against imposing EU sanctions on Poland for alleged breaches to the rule of law. EURACTIV Poland reports.
Thursday’s agreement was long overdue, after disputes about how best to cut ties with the Russian-Belorussian network stood in the way of any progress.
Estonia and Latvia initially both favoured setting up a second alternating current (AC) connection with Poland to complement the existing LitPol link but Lithuania and Poland did not support that idea, despite studies showing that two AC connections would be best.
Of course WN should go with the angle that it was the prerogative of the restaurateur to discriminate and throw her out as a matter of private business/property and freedom of association. This can begin to challenge the (((64 Civil Rights Act))) which violates the capacity (of Whites, anyway) to discriminate on behalf of their private property, business and prerogative of association.
Telegraph, “Restaurant owner who asked Sarah Sanders to leave says she was taking moral stand against Donald Trump”, 24 June 2018:
Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, was refused service at a restaurant on Friday, sparking angry accusations that Donald Trump’s aides are the target of liberal “bigotry”.
Mrs Sanders said she had been asked to leave by the owner of the Red Hen, about three hours drive outside Washington.
The story was confirmed by the restaurant’s owner who said she felt she had to take a stand against for “honesty” and “compassion”.
Mrs Sanders wrote on Twitter: “I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia to leave because I work for the president and I politely left.
“Her (the owner’s) actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.”
The confrontation comes at a particularly tense time in American politics, with protests growing over the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance border policy that has separated children from parents. It follows months and years of growing polarisation in American politics - the cause and effect of Mr Trump’s rise to power.
Republicans lost no time in accusing liberals of policing restaurants.
Mrs Sanders’ father Mike Huckabee, the former Republican presidential candidate, said: “Bigotry. On the menu at Red Hen Restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. Or you can ask for the ‘Hate Plate’. And appetisers are ‘small plates for small minds’.”
Earlier in the week, Mr Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, cut short a dinner at a Mexican restaurant after protesters shouted “Shame!” until she left.
The Red Hen Credit: Daniel Lin
Mrs Sanders’ treatment at the restaurant created a social media commotion with people on both sides weighing in.
On Yelp, a reviewer of the restaurant wrote: “Don’t eat here if you’re a Republican, wearing a MAGA hat or a patriot.”
But other reviewers supported the restaurant owner’s actions.
Both sides of the debate have been leaving comments on the restaurant’s social media sites Credit: Daniel Lin/AP
One said: “12/10 would recommend. Bonus: this place is run by management who stuck up for their beliefs and who are true Americans.” The restaurant was in the town of Lexington, population 7,000, which voted heavily against Mr Trump.
Stephanie Wilkinson, co-owner of the tiny 26-seat eaterie, said she was at home when staff called to tell her Mrs Sanders was dining and she went to see.
She told the Washington Post: “I’m not a huge fan of confrontation. I have a business, and I want the business to thrive.
“But this feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”
When she got there Mrs Sanders, her husband and several others had cheese boards in front of them.
Ms Wilkinson consulted her staff who had all seen Mrs Sander defending the separation of illegal immigrant families at the border. The staff said they wanted Mrs Sanders to leave.
Ms Wilkinson said she went to Mrs Sanders, told her she was the owner, and asked her on to the patio “for a word”.
She said: “I was babbling a little, but I got my point across in a polite and direct fashion. I explained that the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation. I said ‘I’d like to ask you to leave’.”
Mrs Sanders was polite and said simply: “That’s fine. I’ll go.”
Her party followed her out, offering to pay, but were told they did not need to.
Someone claiming to be a member of the waiting staff posted details of the incident on social media, including a memo about Mrs Sanders being 86ed - slang for ejecting someone.
The details were forwarded in a tweet by Brennan Gilmore, the executive director of environmental group Clean Virginia.
Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaité during the signing ceremony with Commission boss Jean-Claude Juncker. [European Commission]
A relieved Merkel in backround as an agitated Conte gets a pat on the back from Tusk and Macron
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (L-R), Estonian Prime Minister Juris Ratas, Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis, Latvia’s Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis during Prime Ministers Council of the Baltic Council of Ministers with Polish counterpart in Vilnius, Lithuania 9 Mar 2018. [EPA-EFE]
